The Hidden Gulag - US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

The Hidden Gulag Second EditionThe official denial cited above is, in part, semanticlegerdemain. 4 It is also a corollary of thestock, Orwellian assertion used by North Koreanrepresentatives and diplomats from the late KimJong-il on down, “There can be no human rightsproblem in our people-centered socialism. 5In actuality, the only real way for North Koreato refute, contradict or invalidate the claimsand testimonies of the North Korean refugeesinterviewed in South Korea for this report wouldbe to permit officials of the United Nations,the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC), the International Labour Organization(ILO), or experienced international humanrights organizations such as Amnesty Internationalor Human Rights Watch, or a delegationof Pyongyang-based Ambassadors to verify orinvalidate on-site the allegations of the formerprisoners. 6 In the absence of reliable on-site refutation,the refugee testimonies stand.4 The term used by DPRK officials and guards for those confinedin the labor camps is “migrant” (e-ju-min). And, it is possibleto define “prisoner” (as opposed to a “detainee”) as someoneconvicted in a court for violating what is defined in law as a crime,whereas, the North Korean political penal labor camp system, asdescribed in this report, is virtually extra-judicial – outside theDPRK court and legal system. Thus, the inmates in the NorthKorean gulag, with a few exceptions noted below, have not beentried or convicted. However, contrary to North Korean semantics,the standard international legal definition is “imprisonmentor other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of thefundamental rules of international law.” As can be seen in thetestimonies in this report the deprivation of physical liberty in theprison camps, penitentiaries, detention-interrogation facilities andmobile forced labor brigades is severe in the extreme. And severelycontrary to the norms and standards of modern internationalhuman rights and criminal law.5 Recently reiterated in the offical Korea Central News Agency(KCNA) Bulletin, 26 October 2011: “There are no ‘human rightsissues’ for us. There can be no such things in the light of the intrinsicnature of the socialist system which serves the people, placingthem in the center of everything.”6 This report provides the precise locations (degrees, minutes andseconds of latitude and longitude) of the prison camps.This report also provides extensive testimonyabout the severely inhumane punishments metedout to North Koreans who are refouled, thatis forcibly repatriated, from China for havingexercised their internationally recognized “rightto leave their country of origin” in search offood, employment, or refuge and asylum. At theDecember 7, 2009 session of the UN HumanRights Council cited above, DPRK representativesmade the astonishing admission:“Border crossers linked to outsideforces who perpetrate anti-stateacts will be strongly guardedagainst and punished.” 7Testimony from scores of “border crossers”—North Koreans forcibly repatriated from Chinaand severely punished upon return to theDPRK—who eventually fled again to Chinaand made their way to South Korea amplydemonstrates that virtually any encounter withSouth Koreans or South Korean culture (whichin the ethnic-Korean region in Northeast Chinais virtually impossible to avoid) is regarded as“an anti-state act.” There is, however, no basis incontemporary international norms and standardsfor imprisonment on the grounds of meetingforeign nationals or listening to foreign TVprograms, videos or music, or attending churchin a third country.The testimony reveals that forced repatriationfrom China is a pathway to pain, suffering, andviolence. Arbitrary detention, torture and forcedlabor are inflicted upon many repatriated NorthKoreans, and sexual humiliations, forced abor-7 Author’s notes from the UN-provided oral translation at theHuman Rights Council meeting, Geneva, 7 December 2009.8